Nasher Xchange formally announces its second site: Vickery Meadow will be home to a ‘community art project’ by Rick Lowe, whose career includes fascinating work in Houston

Artist Rick Lowe is creating a "social sculpture" in Vickery Park as part of Nasher Xchange

It won’t be a piece of sculpture, or a painting hanging on someone’s wall. It’s more of a reaching out to a neighborhood that seemingly only a few people know about. It’s part of the Nasher Xchange project, sponsored by the Nasher Sculpture Center, and on Friday night, it had a whole bunch of people celebrating in Vickery Meadow.

Nasher Xchange is a $3 million endeavor to install 10 new pieces of sculpture in varied areas of the city in honor of the museum’s 10th anniversary in October. But in this case, the sculpture or the artwork is more of a feeling, a kind of human symphony conducted by artist Rick Lowe, who just before sundown Friday showed up to honor a community nestled in a culturally diverse section of Dallas where 27 languages are spoken and where some of the refugees hail from as far away as Iraq.

Vickery Meadow is tucked away in an unassuming apartment village near Skillman and Northwest Highway. Lowe’s effort for the Nasher is unconventional, to say the least, but it was cool on a hot Friday night to see how the the mere promise of people working together was advancing an artist’s agenda by energizing a community.

Lowe describes his contribution to Nasher Xchange as a “social” sculpture in this three-square-mile area that, according to Nasher officials, “makes up one of the most culturally diverse sections of Dallas.”

With African drums beating in the background, middle-schooler Dray Young said he loved what was happening to the neighborhood. The 14-year-old said, “I think it’s great because it really helps our people around here.” Young, who lives nearby and who was helping by passing out water bottles, said the community loved the attention being shown by Lowe and others.

Michael Granberry, The Dallas Morning News

Eden Bekele, who moved to the United States from Ethiopia, grinds her own coffee beans while surrounded from food from her native land.

Eden Bekele sat on the ground, dressed in the clothing of her native Ethiopia, which she left four years ago. She was grinding coffee beans for the purpose of making coffee, which she would then serve along with the scrumptious bread she had baked. The community had brought huge vats of food as part of a pot-luck celebration.

Bekele, 23, said she works as a model and lives nearby. Asked about the Nasher endeavor, she said, “I love my country,” knowing that her heritage is being celebrated as part of Lowe’s endeavor.

Nasher official Stephen Ross said of Lowe’s Friday night party, “Actually, all of this is part of the artwork. We wanted to celebrate the idea of diversity, the cultures you’re seeing today. For us, a lot of what the art is is these meetings — putting people together. It’s the social practice idea.”

Ross said that in the coming months people from the community will contribute their own art, which figures to be heavily influenced by where they’re from. He said they’ll also interact with other artists in other parts of Dallas. This is different from the first announced site in the Nasher Xchange project, which will place an actual piece of sculpture at the Trinity River Audubon Center near Pleasant Grove.

“What Rick is trying to do is figure out if the neighborhood is interested in continuing to do this and, hopefully,” Ross said, “make this a long-term project.”

Lowe and the Nasher picked this location as a byproduct of research. “Rick does what he does,” Ross said. “We got out of the car. We went to Vickery Meadow Learning Center [next door], the Vickery Meadow Improvement District, met people, saw what they were interested in, what they wanted. We found out pretty quickly that people in this neighborhood just want to be connected to the greater Dallas community.”

Entitled Trans.lation, Lowe will kick off a series ofPop-up Markets in Vickery Meadow to coincide with the Nasher’s 10th anniversary. The markets will be open to the public on Oct. 19, Nov. 23, Dec. 21, Jan. 18 and Feb. 22 and will, Nasher officials say, “enable the Vickery Meadow community to share their artistic talents and cultural traditions with each other and the greater Dallas community.”

The fine print of the Nasher announcement describes Lowe as being “internationally respected for one of the most successful community art projects in the world, Project Row Houses, located in Houston’s Third Ward neighborhood. For his Nasher Xchange commission, Lowe is working with an eclectic group of artists, community organizers, designers, and residents to highlight and translate the cultural diversity of Vickery Meadow as an asset. Through a series of workshops and gatherings with residents, Lowe and the Trans.lation team are identifying residents’ creative strengths and connecting them with local artists for collaboration and mentorship to ultimately engender opportunity and entrepreneurship. Trans.lation will facilitate a new vision of what public space and interaction could look like in Vickery Meadow.”

Lowe, Nasher officials say, “has visited Dallas multiple times to hold community meetings with residents and property owners, who have shared an overwhelming desire to feel more connected to each other and to the city of Dallas, outside of Vickery Meadow. Lowe considers the research process by which he connects with and learns about a community to be an integral part of his art.”

Nasher officials say that “as many as 27 languages are spoken by almost 30,000 people in this small but diverse neighborhood. Refugees from around the world, including several Asian and African countries, are settled in the area by organizations such as the International Rescue Committee, Refugee Services of Texas and the resettlement services of the Catholic Charities of Dallas.”

More of the announcement follows:

“For Project Row Houses in Houston, Lowe and his team saved a series of shotgun houses from being demolished and transformed them into galleries, classrooms, studios for artist residencies, and community gathering spaces. Instead of allowing the history of an area to be erased, he created a place that nurtures a sense of togetherness and exchange.

“In addition to Project Row Houses, Lowe has worked as a guest artist on a range of projects, including the Rem Koolhaas-designed Seattle Public Library;Small Business/Big Change in Anyang, South Korea, the Borough Project for the Spoleto Festival 2003 in Charleston, S.C.; and the Delray Beach Cultural Loop in Florida. His art has been exhibited at the Phoenix Art Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Neuberger Museum in Purchase, N.Y.; the Gwangji Biennale in Korea; the Kumamoto State Museum in Japan; and Houston’s Contemporary Arts Museum and Museum of Fine Arts.”

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News, reviews, nuggets and tidbits from the local arts scene, including literature, theater, classical music, opera, dance and the visual arts.